The one Led Zeppelin song Robert Plant would bring to a desert island: “Someone might come and collect me”
Being a frontman isn’t every musician’s calling, but Robert Plant made it look easy. As the mouthpiece and lyricist of legendary rockers Led Zeppelin and an equally successful solo artist, Plant’s influence on the music industry is felt far and wide. When it comes to iconic frontmen in the history of rock and roll, many will certainly conjure the image of Plant strutting across the stage, with his wild curly mane and unbuttoned shirt, wielding a microphone stand, with his stage presence and his ‘capital V’ voice captivating his audience in equal parts. To say Plant has had an illustrious career would be an understatement. The frontman’s discography spans six decades and counting.
Plant has a penchant for penning classic rock anthems from the epic, game-changing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and the howling hard rock of ‘Immigrant Song’, to the sizzling blues of ‘Black Dog’ and the stomping swagger of ‘Whole Lotta Love’. It’s fair to say his contribution to the great British songbook has been plentiful, and he certainly has the singing chops and charisma to match it.
In the years since Led Zeppelin’s dissolution, Plant has well and truly cemented this status with 11 solo albums to his name and a string of collaborations, including a particularly fruitful partnership with Illinois singer-songwriter Alison Krauss. Listening back to your own work can be a challenge, and many artists grow irritated by their early work or even their signature songs. With as expansive a discography as Robert Plant’s, it can be difficult to strike the balance between performing songs for your own enjoyment as well as pleasing the crowd with your greatest hits.
Reflecting on his own discography in an archived interview from October 1998, Plant was asked the ever-difficult question many a muso struggles to answer. If he had to select just one track from the Led Zeppelin back catalogue to bring along to a desert island, which would it be? Plant responded: “I’d like ‘Please Read the Letter’ because I’d stick it in a bottle and pop it off from the island, and someone might come and collect me. And if that’s not corny, I don’t know what happened in 1968.”
Plant’s answer is playful, as he pokes fun at the interviewer’s question, demonstrating his quick wit. Lyrically, ‘Please Read the Letter’ sees the speaker yearning for a former friend or lover who is no longer in their life: “Please read my letter / And promise me you’ll keep / The secrets and the memories / We cherish in the deep.”
Interestingly, ‘Please Read the Letter’, though written with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, was never recorded by the full band. The track appears on the pair’s long-awaited 1998 album Walking Into Clarksdale. It’s a fully-fledged blues rock track, typical of the band, though a little more subdued than some of their more flamboyant early hits.
Plant’s particular liking for the song may be unsurprising to many. Just nine years later, he re-recorded the track with Alison Krauss for the first of their two collaborative albums, Raising Sand, transforming it into a folk-rock tune with its gently strummed guitar, soft vocals, and stomping beat. Her bluegrass-country vocals elevate the track’s themes of hope and sincerity. Their version of the song went on to win the award for ‘Record of the Year’ at the 2009 Grammy Awards Ceremony, adding to Plant’s already overflowing silverware cabinet.
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